


Corsairs on an Open Sea

by tollofthebells



Series: Aurelia Hawke [4]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age II
Genre: Adventure, F/M, Fluff and Humor, Humor, Post-Game(s), Rescue, Rivalmance, Rivalry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-03
Updated: 2019-02-03
Packaged: 2019-10-21 08:30:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,697
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17639348
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tollofthebells/pseuds/tollofthebells
Summary: Fenris and Aurelia travel to Highever harbor to hijack a ship of Tevinter slavers......only to find that neither of them can sail and one of them can't swim.





	Corsairs on an Open Sea

“You should’ve let _me_ go on _your_ shoulders,” Aurelia gasps, knuckles grinding against the stone wall before her, eyes watering as Fenris’s weight evens out over each shoulder blade. “Andraste’s _tits_ , I…oh, Maker…” Thighs shaking, squeaking a whimper, she straightens, hoisting Fenris above her. “Fuck,” she chokes, “my abs can’t handle this…I… _fuck_.”

“I’ve seen your abs, Hawke,” Fenris says simply, unperturbed, getting his footing atop her shoulders. “They can handle it.”

“ _Not if you keep digging your heels into my neck!_ ” she hisses, squeezing her eyes shut and sinking her nails into the ankles of his boots.

He ignores her, continuing on, weight finally leaving her as he pulls himself up over the wall. “Your arms, on the other hand?” he mutters, dropping his pack beside him. She breathes deeply, wipes the sweat from her brow. “Absolutely not. If I let you up here first, you’d never have the upper body strength to pull me up after you.”

She glares up at him, gingerly accepting his hand and he grasps her wrist, lifting her up effortlessly to join him on top of the wall.

“I should’ve dropped you,” she mutters when he lets her down.

“And I _could_ have dropped you,” he replies pleasantly. “Fortunately, my upper body strength is just--”

“Would you _shut up about upper body strength_?” she growls, brushing her hands over her jacket, her trim trousers, before looking out past the wall. Finally, a view.

She hasn’t seen the Waking Sea since they’d left Val Royeaux over a month ago, and she hasn’t seen the Fereldan coast since she’d sailed out of Gwaren years and years before. But in spite of the strange northern tides, the barely familiar green-laureled crest of the Couslands, the sight of Highever port still feels like coming home.

“Getting soft on me, Hawke?” Fenris asks, rummaging through his pack. “Don’t look too hard. You might fall in.” She shakes her head, shakes off any trace of sentimentality from her face, and perches on the wall beside him. He smirks at her and she doesn’t return the laugh--it’s not common knowledge that Aurelia Hawke never learned to swim. But it’s knowledge that, to her misfortune, Fenris possesses. And he never fails to remind her.

“Are they here?” she asks, changing the subject, squinting out over the docks. _Mostly empty_ , only a couple of merchant ships bearing flags from Antiva to one side of the port, a small fishing dinghy beside them, and few ships at all along the rest of the docks.

But Fenris nods solemnly, points out to the the middle of the port, just before them, indicating a ship bearing no flag and only plain white sails. “There.”

“How do you--”

“I know,” he interrupts her.

“Do you think they have any--”

He shakes his head. “Look at the dock, Hawke. They don’t have nearly enough armed or on guard. Likely, they only just arrived...came to capture any escaped men and bring them right back to Tevinter.”

“Well,” she muses, pulling her bow from behind her and reaching back into her quiver. “No one’s going back to Tevinter on our watch. Men or slavers.” She turns back to find him grinning, _good_ , she knew he would. She strums the string of her bow, adrenaline, _rush_  already building in her and _Maker_ , she hasn’t felt this way since running across the Emprise with a raging Orlesian at their heels. “We’ll see how many I can take from up here,” she directs him. “When it gets to be too much, you’ll have to drop down and take them head on, and I’ll follow. Then, we--”

“Hawke--”

“--we clean out whatever mess is still left on board, and then--”

“ _Hawke_.”

“--and then we have our own boat!”

She beams at him, proud of her rushed planning, proud of _them_ , and he frowns.

“Hawke,” he says, again, a _third_ time. “When was the last time you even _used_ your bow?” She opens her mouth, but he stops her. “Aside from hunting?”

 _Rude_. It’s been years, truth be told. Since before Kirkwall. Since Lothering. The close quarters of the city were far better suited to knives and quick, clean kills, and so she’d abandoned her bow and arrows, for _years_ , only to carry them along on their travels now and take them for a quick hunt, nothing more. “Are you questioning my skill?” she asks him, narrowing her eyes, and there’s no tease, no humor in her voice. “I doubt _you’ve_ ever used a bow in your life, so why don’t you take your giant sword and your Maker-damned upper body strength down to the docks like I told you.”

He snorts. “When it’s time.”

She rolls her eyes. Twirls the arrow once more between her fingers, draws back. Breathes in. She has one in her sights strolling leisurely on the gangway, making for the dock.

_He won’t make it._

She pulls back fully now, _steady_ , she’s about to let go and--

“Are you sure you’re doing that right?”

She misses.

She _misses_.

“Are you out of your _mind_?” she nearly screams, whipping around to face him, her long hair lashing him in the jaw when she does. “I _missed_ , you made me _miss_ , Fenris, I fucking hate--”

“They’ve seen us,” he rushes, gripping his greatsword and dropping down from the wall in a quick, lithe movement.

“ _Venhedis_ ,” she breaths, she’s furious, _seething_ , hitching her bow to her back yet again in favor of the knives at her hips and taking the jump behind him.

The docks are sturdy, wide, ropes at the rails and even for the near-blinding glitter on the water they’re able to make quick work of the first wave of slavers to leave the ship. Fenris is a _wall_ of force up against them, all fury and sweeping blows and one-hit hilt bashes; it’s nearly pitiful, truthfully, watching them fall to his sword, watching him bring them to justice. The few that do make it past him find themselves almost instantly upon her daggers, and she grins at the sight, kicks the bodies into the water beside them, _a watery grave_ , she thinks, _more than they deserve_.

By the time they reach the boat, there are none left. All remain dead behind them, or else sinking to the bottom of HIghever’s harbor.

“That was...easy,” she says, still a bit surprised, as Fenris pulls up the gangway. He only shrugs, humble, but she can see the hint of a smile pulling at his lips. “Where to, then?”

He gestures to the helm. “Anywhere but Kirkwall, Hawke,” he says, and she laughs. “The wheel is yours.”

As quickly as it had appeared, her smile vanishes. “Oh, no,” she says, shaking her head at him. “I’ll pick a place, but the steering is all you.”

He gapes at her. “I don’t know how to sail. I assumed you did.”

“You assu--you _what_?”

“I assumed you knew how to sail.”

Now it’s her turn to gape. “You _assumed_ I knew how to--that I--Fenris, do you have any idea how close Lothering is to an ocean?”

“I don’t--”

“It’s not close at all!” she hollers. “Makers _balls_ , you thought I knew how to _sail_? How could you--”

“How could _you_ think _I_  knew how to sail?” he retorts, raising his voice to match her volume. “Like I really had time to squeeze in some casual _sailing_ lessons in Tevinter. Honestly, Hawke, I--”

“This is why we should have brought Isabela.”

He scowls at her. “Don’t even start.”

“At least _she_ brings some useful skills to the--”

“Shut up, Hawke.”

“If Isabela were here, we wouldn’t be in this--” 

Her words are cut off by a scream when he reaches out, gives her a slight push on the shoulder, and sends her backward over the rail of a ship. A quick splash, another scream, and he smirks. _Hardly payback for the last time_ , he thinks, remembering just months earlier when she’d pushed him practically off a cliff somewhere in Orlais and he barely made it to the bottom in one piece, only the thick snow around him enough to cushion the fall.

“Fenris!” she shrieks from below, and he chuckles. It’s not a far fall, he’d seen the size of the boat when they boarded. 

 _Always so dramatic_ , he thinks, but he’s quick to toss a rope over the deck and into the water after her. “All right, Hawke,” he calls, waiting for her pull on the other end, but the length remains slack. “Hawke, let’s go, I’ll bring you back up.”

“Fenris!” she screams again.

And he remembers.

_She can’t swim._

“Oh, fuck,” he breathes, unbuckling his sword belt and dropping it to the deck in a single rapid motion before diving in after her.

He’s grateful for the rope he’d already tossed in and for the summer currents flowing west across the Waking Sea, with both, it’s an easy rescue-- _could be easier if it weren’t for her flailing limbs_ , he thinks, but it’s his own fault, he’d forgotten, and so he says nothing until he’s pulled both of them back up, hoists her over the rail, and heaves himself up behind her.

“What,” she sputters, dripping from head to toe, staring absolute _daggers_ at him, “the _fuck._ What that?” He doesn’t answer her, hurries instead to the pack he’d dropped when they boarded the ship, and retrieves his blanket. “If this was some sort of sick plan to show of your blighted _upper body strength_  then I swear to--”

“I’m sorry,” he says, earnestly, truthfully, draping the blanket around her shoulders. She glares at him, and he leans into her for a short, watery kiss. “Aurelia, I’m sorry. I forgot.”

“You forgot,” she repeats slowly, and he nods. She takes a deep breath and pulls his blanket tighter around her. “Then I suppose I will conveniently forget that you ‘don’t know’ how to sail.”

“Excuse me?” he asks her, and she nods her head back to the helm of the boat.

“You’re a fast learner,” she says. “And you’re well read since we’ve left Kirkwall. No time like the present. Anchors away.”


End file.
